Laughing at the Dark

I'm in college, majoring in Creative Writing and Communications, and I thought blogging would be a good place to practice my craft. I don't really care if anyone reads this, I was just bored.

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How Peter Met Wendy. As Told by Peter

One day, towards the end of our Senior year at Neverland, Peter turned to me and asked, “Did I ever tell you how I met Wendy?” I told him he hadn’t, and if he had I was too high to remember, so he launched right in. “Well… first, have you seen Clockwork Orange? Of course you’ve fucking seen it, I’ve played it like a million times; anyway, this one Halloween, Sophomore year I think, I was the Clockwork Orange guy. Alex DeSomething. DeLarge. Alex Delarge. I was him. I had the cod piece and everything.”

            He stopped to fish the cigarettes out of his pocket. “What was I talking about? Oh yeah, so I was Alex Clockwork Orange dude, and I was pretty drunk. And just a little stoned. Like, not nearly as much as I wanted to be. And I drinking in Valor’s room or something, and I met some cool people, and at one point, I totally was grinding on some Disney Princess, which I happen to think my character loved, and at some point I was following Donna or Valor around and I wound up in some random suite in Ronaldo. There was some sort of scene going on, but I was kind of drunk so all I noticed was the smoking hot tiny little redhead, wearing some devilish red dress, half in tears holding a bottle of wine. She said something like ‘Well if he doesn’t get here soon, I’ll have to drink this all by myself.’ I was quite taken with her. As we were leaving, or possibly while we were just standing in the room, I said to Valor ‘Dude, I want to meet her.’ And he said ‘Nah, man. She’s got some… issues.’ But do you think I listened to him? I never fucking listened to Noble, he was kind of a prick. So like… I just kind of kept an eye out for her, you know?”

            By now, he had finished his cigarette and was already reaching for another. I thought, what the hell, I’ll join him. He seemed to be enjoying the story. “So I didn’t see her again for months. I think… Anyway, I ran into her one day in front on the library. That’s always remained a common meeting place… and that first time I casually ran into her, I was recuperating from an all-nighter. Or more likely, a several-nightser. Anyway, we had a cigarette, and I made my feeble attempt at brain dead, over tired conversation, and she left. And you, like… we kind of had a moment, and I was kicking myself for not getting her number. But I was like… you know, you can’t just reel in that big fish right away. I got to play the line a little. I gotta be cool. Or at least not desperate. So like, I ran into her again a while later, and this time she was the one who was distracted.” He paused for a moment and futilely attempted to blow a smoke ring (“I swear I did it one time…”) and tried to find the next story thread in that vacuous smoky mind of his.

            “I guess… the next thing was Bellz. You know how I like to meet people, right?” (I recalled my first meeting with Peter... I was standing on the edge of a group of smokers outside Beta when he walked up to me and said “Hi, I’m Peter. Wanna get high?”) I nodded. “Well, I met this dude named Bellz who was kind of gay and liked to hang with us, and I mentioned my desire to meet ladies, so every time he came over he would bring a different chick with him. The second one was Wendy. And I still forget to get her god damn number!

            “But I heard she was in dance, and my friend Valarie was the dance captain, so I invited her over all casual like and persuaded her to invite Wendy over. In exchange, we couldn’t play video games all night. But it was worth it. That time, I finally got those digits. I gave her champagne to drink with me while everyone else in the room drank cheap beer. After she left, I turned to my friends and said ‘Dibs.’ Apparently, she found out, but I didn’t know that till much later.

            “At first, she wasn’t into me. Or at least made a show about not being into me… It’s no one’s fault but my own, I came on too strong. Girls hate that; expectations. If you tell a girl she’s perfect, she’ll resent you because she’ll think you’re teasing her. People don’t like to be treated better then they feel… I mean, that’s why asshole’s always get all the chicks. Cuz most girls think they’re ugly, or dumb, or worthless, and when an asshole comes by and validates their opinion, well gosh darn it, at least its something in common. Fuck, what was I talking about?” I shrugged. “Anyway, that’s how I met Wendy.”

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Infinite Entropy - first 263 words

He stood silently in the train station, neatly nestled in the middle of the chain gang. The rough metal of the shackles were itchy against his wrists; he did his best to focus on this small detail, letting it consume and distract him to allow for a brief respite from the nagging whirlpool his mind had been the past week.

A gentle tug told him it was time to walk again. He kept his eyes down, studying the dull glisten of the sheet metal floor and the echo his steel soled boots made with each slow drudging step he took. His echo combined with the echoes of those in front of and behind him, creating a resonant bass line to accompany his shameful march. The sound bounced from the steel floor off the steel walls and back to his captive ears; he felt as though he was being lead through a subwoofer.

There was an undeniable cleanliness to the station, which he knew was meant to convey the detached sterility with which the law was enforced in Capital City. Everything was polished to a shine. Even the plain white robes he and his fellow prisoners had been issued were spotless. The only hint of filth in the whole building was the men themselves.

“Hey buddy,” with the words came the hot breath of the speaker on the back of the itchy man’s neck. “You know where they takin’ us?”

 It was immediately apparent the speaker had long neglected oral hygiene, and for this as much as any other reason, his question was ignored.

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Why I haven't posted much

I got a job at Giant. For those unaware, Giant is a big chain grocery store, owned by the same parent company as Giant Eagle. I work in the deli. I slice deli meats and cheeses. That is what I do on my average day: I put on my No-Slip sneakers, my green Giant polo and my black Levis, and I go to the Giant deli and slice things. For my services, I am compensated $8.50 an hour. Good god in heaven, save me now.

So… that happened.

Before I gained the distasteful title of “employed” I had some fun in Pittsburgh, attending a Bright Eyes show. If you haven’t heard of Bright Eyes, good. That’s why I listen to him. You see, Bright Eyes is “indie music,” and those of us who listen to him and his ilk (colloquially known as “hipsters”) consider this relative anonymity a grand merit.

It starts in elementary school, I think. The first band I really got into (after a thankfully brief period of Backstreet Boys and Shania Twain) was Green Day. These days, Green Day is best known for the impressively large dick is sucks, but back in the good old days of 2003, before the relative failure of American Idiot and whatever shit came after that, they spoke to a youthful angst in my middle school self beyond the radio drivel of the time. Now Green Day is to indie what the Pope is to Jewish (tangentially related, if at all), but I bought Dookie during that magical time when it was out of relevance. They had already faded into the background as the next generation of pop punk garbage took over, and had not yep released their mediocre at best comeback, so nobody in my class had heard of them. This made me, the listener, superior to everyone else I knew.

Now, I can’t speak for all hipsters, and I’m certainly a fringe hipster at best, but I assume the basic experience is pretty much the same—A feeling of undeserved superiority derived from knowledge of the obscure. Anyway, the concert was pretty swell. Me and my buddies rolled a few James Bond’s and smoked them on the decidedly unkempt streets of Pittsburgh.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed the pseudo-political, death obsessed music Bright Eyes was putting out, the concert itself was a little odd. You see, humble reader, Conner Oberst (that’s his real name) has a particular blend of post-folk punk fusion indie booze powered rock that is simply impossible to dance to. So we stood packed in that warehouse, slightly stoned and surrounded by drunkest, pink-hairest people I’ve ever met, and we all swayed slightly. That’s it. A little bit of swaying. Not too much, or you’re gonna spill your beer on my shoes… oh, too late. Yeah. That’s the modern concert experience.

By the way, a James Bond is when you empty out a cigarette and refill it with slightly less harmful substances. It’s also known as a “covert opt,” and a “spliff.”

Other things that are happening are: I’m going to write the story to a video game. It’s about the conflicting forces of nature and technology, symbolizing the current day conflict we all face between individuality and conformity in the face of high technology. The bad guy is basically facebook, except its like a government controlled facebook that turns you into a zombie, and the government is controlled by a corporate conglomerate. The good guys are hippies. In case you couldn’t tell, it’s an indie game. You haven’t heard of it. We like it that way.

Anyway, as I write the story (if every start writing the story) I’ll be posting it here. And now that I’m a working stiff with increasing levels of pent up angst or whatever, I’ll probably be posting more good stuff, like my first post. I know this is kind of shitty, but I’m really just trying to get back on the horse, so to speak. So… expect more stuff, and expect it to be better.

And who the fuck is anonymoose?

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Why you can't win arguments on the internet, and an interesting read to boot.

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I went to an Art Festival today

Christ was I dying for a cigarette. It was really all I could think of the entire “art fair,” if you could call it that, and most of the day afterwards as well. My brother was a member of something called indoor percussion, which was basically a glorified chimes choir with a little added rock flare, and the high school set them up to perform at the street fair. I try to be nice to my mom when I can, to make up for what a horrible son I am, so I agreed to go along with her, saving her the agony or embarrassment of being there alone.

And it was an embarrassment. Five or six city blocks were roped off along the Harrisburg riverfront so the modern day gypsies could display and peddle their wares. My favorite cousin as a child, whose name (Sheb) is a story unto itself married a relatively untalented artist who specialized in painting. I imagine this is where she’ll end up in a decade, if Sheb doesn’t get into grad school and finish his architecture decree.

He would probably enjoy it, life on the road traveling from town to town to work to Art Festival circuit. I know his dad would at least; he was a true hippy back in the 70’s, but unlike us neohippies or the stereotypical flower children, he wasn’t in it for the drugs. At least, as far as I know he wasn’t. He did it for the adventure. To travel to country, meet interesting people, and hear great music.

I’m jealous of that life, I know it wouldn’t hold up today. Not that it couldn’t be done, just that it wouldn't have the impact. Today, everywhere is the same. People are the same. We’ve been globalized, united across continents by the internet and Facebook, and we put a McDonalds in Moscow and Beijing. Sure, some people still pile into a VW Microbus and drive across the country, there are still jam bands, and Christ knows we haven’t lost the drugs, but doing it today would feel tired, like a weak tribute to the cultural explorers of the past. Being here, in 2011, we can see what happened to the generation lost in space. They’re here, at a shitty Art Fest in a shitty city, selling shitty art to the old and the jaded.

They all know each other, as evident from their conversation as they set up pavilions.

“Haven’t seen you since last year, where have you been?”

“Oh, you know, touring the country. Did a show in Baltimore last week.”

“Yeah, how’s it been going?”

“Well…  I came back here, didn’t I?”

Walking through the tent city isles, my mind wanders to Mexico. Sophomore year of high school my family vacationed in Cancun, an area literally created for tourists in what was formerly swampland as a sort of West coast Tijuana, only cleaner because it was saved the burden of a local populous. I suspect the powers that be were guided more heavily by post-Disney Florida, another faux-paradise tourist trap raised from the swamps, then anything else, because Disney resort minus family friendly equals Cancun.

It’s not just the similar climate, fauna, and “come buy our shit” sleaze that make Cancun and Florida feel so indistinguishable, they both bare a distinctly artificial aesthetic. Every plant, building, road, and Spanish speaking brown person (this may be racist, but for all intents and purposes I can’t really distinguish Mexicans from the Puerto Ricans of Florida) was imported and placed with care for the singular reason of separating you from your dinero. The difference, of course, was that I could drink in Mexico. I’m not quite sure if it was legal, but the bartenders thought it was funny to let the kids drink, and it probably was.

While we were there, we took a day trip from the beautifully manufactured sterility of the resort district to see the “true Mexico” of several hundred years ago and visited some Mayan or Aztec ruins. I appreciated the architecture and the history, though I was probably the only member of the family to do so, until we got to the vendors.

They lined the paths between the history, each selling the same merchandise at widely varying prices, each claiming the items handmade and impossible to get elsewhere. Some had wood carved snakes and other animals in the Mayan style, some Aztec calendars, some “hand woven” ponchos, others pottery, paintings, any type of clay and glassware, and a few selling glass pipes and bongs, which at the time interested me only as a curiosity. Many had a few types of items, and the most enterprising had long tables with almost everything.

Now, years later, I come to an Art Fest in Harrisburg to find the same thing except here the street vendors are the main attraction. In fact, though my mom and I snuck in the back, people where charged admission to walk along several blocks of mediocre street artists and buy their kitschy knickknacks. Now I’m sure there is a certain crowd for this type of thing—the quasi-hip, the old and bored, and those putting on the appearance of having taste; but take it from me, a cynical 20 year old with illusions of grandeur, that this Festival was a display of the washed up and the burnt out.

That’s not to say there weren’t talented artists there, and maybe jumping town-to-town following Art Festivals is the only way for an aspiring artist to make money doing what they love in this day and age, but I doubt it was anyone’s first choice. As chipper and friendly as they all were, to me the air was heavy with a sense of defeat. Every single one of them knew, as they displayed their work, which likely has real meaning and significance to each artist, this is what their life has come to: hocking their art on the street. They didn’t “make it,” so it’s either Art Fest or get a real job.

Maybe I only found it depressing because I consider myself an artist of sorts, and I know my chosen field is just as saturated and worthless as any of theirs, and I know within a few years I’ll have to make the same choice, between pursuing my art above all else or succumbing to the mundanity of the rat race, but I’ll still in college god dammit, and that means I can look down on everyone else for at least another year.